In today's society, many hot beverages are served in disposable cups with disposable lids for convenient and efficient beverage consumption. The cup contains the beverage while the lid acts as a sealer for ensuring that the beverage stays within the cup, thus preventing excessive spillage of the beverage. The types of cup lids for use with the standardized frusto conical disposable cups are many. Most of these lid designs employ a form of drinking access to the beverage. Many disposable lid designs include a small quasi-oval shaped sip hole to facilitate the drinking of a beverage without removing the lid, thereby maintaining the seal between the cup and lid.
Despite the seal between the cup and lid and the relative small size of sip holes, spills and leaks often occur as a result of the beverage sloshing and spilling out the sip hole. In a worst case scenario with a full cup, a hot or cold beverage may spill out of the sip hole in geyser-like fashion, possibly staining the user's clothing or automobile interior or burning the user.
One attempt to address this problem is the Traveler Plus™ lid made by Solo. The Traveler Plus™ lid provides a user-initiated, separately attached sip hole cover under the lid to close the sip hole when the user is not drinking the beverage. The cover includes a latch that extends through a slot in the lid and, when pushed or pulled by a finger of the user, the cover swivels away from or towards the sip hole to open and close the sip hole.
Despite some apparent advantages, the Traveler Plus™ lid retains several drawbacks. First, the location of the latch is such that a user may have difficulty holding the cup and accessing the latch with one hand. As a practical matter, most users will find it necessary to hold the cup in one hand and open or close the latch with the other hand. Because beverage drinkers often desire to drink beverages contained in the disposable cup while driving or holding another item in one hand, a user cannot drink through the lid without dangerously or inconveniently using both hands. Therefore, a need exists for preventing spillage of beverages through a sip hole in disposable lids while holding the cup with a single hand.
Second, the Traveler Plus™ lid has a two-piece construction, making the lid relatively complicated and costly to manufacture. Manufacturers of disposable lids generally produce and sell lids in bulk. Therefore, even a small increase in manufacturing costs per lid results in a significant increase in cost which is generally passed to retailers, i.e. coffee houses, restaurants, gas stations, etc., that purchase in bulk. A more costly lid may cause some retailers to use a more conventional, less costly disposable lid.
Furthermore, lids with complicated and complex lid designs, such as the Travel Plus™ lid, are more difficult to nest and thus more expensive to distribute on a commercial scale. Because of the potential fallbacks of using a more complex disposable lid, many beverage retailers continue to use stackable lids with an uncovered sip hole. Therefore, a need exists to prevent beverage spills in disposable cup and lid combinations which allow beverage retailers to retain the economical incentives associated with the use of more conventional disposable lid designs.
The instant invention satisfies this need through a reusable, easily attachable, anti-spill device, which when used in conjunction with a conventional cup and lid combination, prevents the spillage of a beverage through the lid's sip hole when not in use. Specifically, beverage retailers may continue to provide beverages in a conventional cup and lid combination while beverage consumers can make use of the present invention to prevent spills when handling those beverage cup and lid combinations “on the run.”